guatemala, new shoes, & Jesus.

So here it was, the day after I returned from Guatemala. I was eager to go to church, thinking I would be bubbling with excitement & stories from my previous 5 days. I wasn't. In fact, I was mad. I couldn't think of the words to describe my experience, so I replied to the inquiries with a smile and an "it was awesome, it was really good." But in my brain I was running through the crowds of perfectly manicured people in their Sunday best, shaking them and screaming "It's not ok! People are dying! People are hungry! You have to help!" 

Tears streamed down my face as I tried to convince myself that the words I was singing in the worship songs really are true. It didn't feel like it. It didn't feel like God's freedom was here...or at least the people in Guatemala didn't seem to be free. They are completely enslaved to a life of poverty, hunger, sickness, sexual abuse, grief, pain, dehydration. Sure, I can sing about God's unfailing love, never running out or giving up on me, but can those people in Pueblo Modelo or Del Rio? I felt my husband's arm around me as I sobbed, and my mind flashed back to 10 months ago, recalling all of the Sunday mornings I would barely make it through praise and worship, holding onto the chair in front of me & my husband's arm around me just so I could stand, but still forcing myself to sing His praises as both my heart and arms were empty. I thought to myself, "this was a bad idea. I just got to the point where I could stand on my own two feet, and now I'm back to square one, grieving over every single face I laid eyes on." And that's exactly where God wants me. Broken. 

I realized that in the past 10 months of brokenness, I've accomplished more for His Kingdom than I have in my entire life. God doesn't want "whole" Savannah who feels comfortable. He's saving that for eternity. Right now, He wants a brokenhearted child of God who is longing to be a vessel, pouring out His love into the lives of others. So again, I pray a prayer that I never dreamed of uttering. I pray that I'm continuously broken for Him, never content with what the world deems as accomplished, but always searching for what my God wants to accomplish through me. 

So...as hard as it is to grasp, the answer is still yes, He is faithful. It doesn't seem fair that their lives are at the mercy of sponsors and donations, but the reality is that God's love is still unfailing. It doesn't seem fair that hundreds of thousands of people are relying on God to stir up compassion in the heart of His people in order to recieve a meal. But guess what? He does. It's hard to comprehend a world where we can't take our sick babies to the doctor or go to the store for shoes. But I've never seen God's love at the pediatrician, or a servant's heart at Rack Room. So who then, is better off? Because I know those children with dirt covering their battered up feet saw Jesus in the hearts of those girls who washed away the mud, and put new shoes on them. I know the mothers of the sick babies saw Jesus in the faces of the people who held their dying children and carried them to the other side of the river, where there was a Hope of Life! 

So please, be patient with me. If you see me crying at the playground, or quietly trying to hold it together in a restaurant, it's because my heart is in Guatemala. And only my 30 cousins can truly understand. 

If you'd like to find out more, visit: 

http://worldhelp.net/sponsor-a-child/ or, 

http://hopeoflifeintl.org/

11 months too late.

It's the 4th. I hate this day. I know how I should feel, but I just don't. It's his birth date, and I should reflect on this day with joy, thinking of the happiness that was whisked into my life at 7:54 a.m.
But for me, and probably for many more people who have outlived their children, their birth date breeds anger.

 On April 4th, I was peering into a hospital bassinet, touching his fuzzy hair and kissing his soft cheeks, repeating "Hi Mama's Mans. I'm your Mama. Hi Isaiah. I've been waiting so long to meet you!"
 Only to be peering into a casket for the first time, on May 4th, where I held his hand so tightly that when I let go, I noticed I accidentally made it turn purple. 
Where I couldn't even look at his hair because they made me cover it with a hat so I didn't see the autopsy incisions. 
Where I almost threw up when I kissed his cheeks because he was cold and hard. 
Where my quiet whispers to him quickly turned into loud groans and screams, begging him to wake up. "Just wake up. Please wake up, Mama's Mans. This doesn't look like him. What did they do to him? Why doesn't he have a diaper on? He needs a diaper."
 The "mom" in me couldn't let go, even when my mind rationalized that he really didn't need a diaper...but what was worse is that it meant that he didn't need me. 

I have one month to prepare for his 1st birthday. There will be no decorations, no party, no smash cake, no pictures. Just the hazy memory of an infant's face, and a release of some sort, in his honor. There will be a month long struggle taking place in my mind, half of it thinking of what I should be doing, and the other half repeating that this IS what I'm supposed to be doing. This is my plan, my life, my story...I just wish I had known before that I'm not the Author, but only the supporting role. 

Bread crumbs for thought.

There's a box next to my nightstand. It's been there for a year, never opened since we moved. I've never wondered what is in it or thought about opening it. It's marked "Sav's night stand. Keep out." and even though I was the one who wrote it, I figured it was best if even I heeded that warning. Today, I ripped it open, unaware of what I might find, a little scared to face old memories, because for me, memories are always coupled with "what ifs." I didn't want to go there, to that place of uncertainty, where I question my purpose on Earth, God's existence, and what decision was it, what could I have done differently to change the outcome of Isaiah's fate.

 First, (and least importantly, but still really awesome) I found 5 Coach wristlets that I totally forgot I had. Score! I found my planner from 2011, the year that I found out I would become Mom to another life...a really important life that would change my entire perspective on my purpose here. I found pieces of my life that I tucked away, knowing one day they would be of importance. 

Most importantly I found a piece of me, my state of mind in my rock bottom days, yearning for acceptance and to be filled with God's love on a journey I felt I was taking alone. The only evidence of my thoughts while my precious boy was in my belly, the only window into my soul of the person I once was while I was desperate for God's grace. The tears began to form as I read my heart's deepest desires, pleading for His help, and scribbling down all of the blessings He had already bestowed upon my life.

 Only, those tears turned into gut wrenching cries as I read:

"I just can't ever imagine a time when this portion of my life will look better than the present. I pray that I never have to see that day. I pray that this storm passes, and when it does, I will come out of it a stronger woman of God, mother, & wife. I know there's a reason for all of this, & maybe digging deeper into a relationship with God will reveal it, because I can't begin to understand how my situation can be looked at as a blessing."

 I saw that God was strengthening me for something, and although I couldn't figure out what that was, I never imagined He would use a hard time to strengthen me for something much worse. I thought I knew His plan, I thought that was the deepest, darkest valley I would have to overcome, and that if I kept on obeying His commands and following His will for my life, the blessings would surely come. But instead, a darker day was looming ahead. No one ever tells us that. Growing up in church my whole life, I learned that if you were being obedient and your life lined up with God's purpose for it, your cup would runneth over. 

But the real, not so appealing truth is that God's design for our lives, molding us and shaping us like clay into the person He has created us to be, HURTS. His work in my life, strengthening me, and emptying my cup to the point of dehydration, forcing me to drink from the well that never runs dry, wasn't punishment. It was redemption. Only, I thought this was a one time deal, surely God's blessings are right around the corner, I've placed my life in His hands. Then the lightbulb in my brain turned on, and "what if His blessings come through rain drops" resonated in my heart. These trials & valleys we walk through ARE the blessings. They're shaping us to be children of the Creator, the one who knows us by name, whose ways are higher than our ways, who wants us to be equipped to accomplish all of our hearts desires that He impressed on our hearts. This way has proven that trials will indeed come, but I can welcome them, knowing that my Father has bigger plans for me than I do, and not only on this Earth, but for all of eternity. So there it is. Another "bread crumb" that was left in this valley, knowing it would nourish my soul, and leave me hungry for the next time God allows me to take a peak at this masterpiece He has started. 

Bathrooms & Wal Mart

It's not every day I have something good to say about Wal Mart. Actually, I'm not sure I ever have, as I've always been more of a Target kinda girl. I mean a store that has a website entirely dedicated to pictures of the types of "customers"...you can't blame me.

But I have to give credit where it's due, and Wal Mart made me jump up and down laughing and squealing like a five year old in the middle of the aisle. Happy tears streamed down my cheeks & before I had the chance to act like a normal person & hush my face I looked up and yelled "THANK YOU!" I then regained my composure and wiped my face with the thought "who cares, no one in here is normal anyways" as visions of women with curly brown fingernails wearing shorts 10 sizes too small flooded my mind.

What prompted this emotional dance party, you ask?

 Rewind to "The 25th Day" post & you'll find my most desperate pleas took place on my bathroom floor. I begged God with everything in me to let my boy live. I promised I'd sit with him in the hospital for months. I pounded the floor. I sat in a daze wondering if it was real. I believed with everything in me that God would answer these requests. He had to. And then when I walked out to hear that He hadn't, my moments of raw, spilling out my heart, God listen to me prayer, turned into feelings of unimportance. Did my God have better things to do?

 I've since hated going into my bathroom. In the immediate days that followed his death, I couldn't stand to be alone, I felt scared and vulnerable. I especially didn't want to walk into the bathroom alone. It reminded me of my intimate moments with God and I filled with anger as I wondered why He ignored me. I would ask my husband to walk in there with me, I thought if I walked in there alone, we'd either have to remodel the bathroom, or I'd never come back out.

So after months and months of walking into this room that reminded me of unanswered, minuscule, unimportant to God prayers, I decided to look for some new decor in hopes of sweeping these bad memories under a new rug. But God..well He's funny. He wasn't about to leave me hangin with some seashell soap dish that had no meaning. Nope. There were butterflies! Brown & blue butterflies. A shower curtain with little blue butterfly shower curtain holders! AND in the middle of all of this goodness, HIS WORD:
BELIEVE
"If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, be moved from this place to that; and it will be moved, and nothing will be impossible to you." Matthew 17:20
TRUST
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not to your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5
PRAISE
"Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise." Psalm 98:4
SERVE
"But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15

He heard me. He heard my cries & he cares. "You are the God of my story, write every line for your glory." This chapter hasn't been pretty, but I can always find the beauty in it because I'm not writing it... & the Author is far from finished.

(for those who may not know, brown & blue were the colors worn at Isaiah's memorial. We released blue butterflies that day for him to signify his new life. "What a caterpillar calls the end, a butterfly calls the beginning.") I've since become a huge fan of all things butterfly.

It's okay to cry, but much more fun to dance

"Heyyyy, how are you?"..."Good!" We exchange smiles and awkwardly pretend we're looking at our phones or trying to find our children so we can escape what would inevitably be a clumsily strung together conversation that we'd rather just avoid for fear of not knowing what to say. 

Or would it be? 

"What do you say to a person who's had a child die? 

What if she cries?

 I really want to ask how she's doing, but I'm not sure if I should bring it up."

If these thoughts sound familiar, you are not alone! In fact, I'm writing this just for you! 

Truth: When I say I'm "good", that means that I'm moving on with life just like everyone else. It means that I'm embracing what it is to have a child so close to my heart but so far from my arms. It means that some days, my heart aches for him, and others I can think of him and smile. It means that he is just as much a part of our family as I am. No child's drawing is without him. He's never left out of bedtime prayers. He even "sat" on Santa's lap for Christmas pictures. He's so much a part of our family that the only thing that's missing is his body. 

Truth: My heart bursts every time someone asks about him. I don't care if I cry, I cry anyways. You aren't bringing anything up that I don't think about daily. It reminds me that I'm not the only one that thinks of him. It reminds me that his short life created a ripple effect in this big world and that I'll never know how much he's impacted this world this side of Heaven. I can't explain how much it meant to be asked about Isaiah in the middle of Elijah's gingerbread house party in his Kindergarten class. (you know who you are:). The tears fell and some 5 year olds stared, but my heart was overjoyed to talk about this healing process and to know that someone cared enough to ask. 

Truth: I was angry for awhile. The best way I can explain grief is that I feel like I'm walking through a minefield with a blindfold on. Just as I start to gain some confidence, something unexpected happens and BOOM. There goes my leg and I'm laying on the floor in his room for hours trying to recover. 

Truth: If I had been without a Savior, I'd still be maintaining a life without Isaiah. I'd still have three kids to tend to, and I would undoubtedly know the value of each day I get to spend with them. BUT! Those minefields I travel through would have mentally blown me to pieces. If there was no calm in the storm, no light in the darkness, no rest for the weary, no hope that I'll see my boy again, no promise that he's safe in the arms of the very One I cry out to in agony, this journey wouldn't be worth taking. If my Ava crawled into my lap, sobbing while she recounted the details that she witnessed on that night, and I wasn't able to calm her with the promise that her baby brother is alive & made whole, I would have given up. 

Truth: God is right here. This isn't some fairy tale or sweet thoughts to think about...but I have to be honest that I haven't always felt Him. The biggest lesson I have learned in this journey is that I need to be intentional. For awhile I sat idly, putting minimum effort into digging into His Word, or finding healing for myself, because I thought it just took time. I didn't have the energy for much, and so I waited. And waited and waited. Until I finally realized that all I was doing was waiting to wake up one day and have the energy to be the mom, wife, child of God, and person I wanted to be. Ring ring. That was my wake up call. Intentionally seeking God with everything inside of me..reading, praying, singing, reading, admitting I'm not ok, tearing down the walls that I started to build to guard my heart. All that stuff, yeah it's working. So when you ask me how I am and I say "good", what I really mean is "alive"... and I haven't felt that way in 8 months. 

& sometimes we mess up.

Here sits in front of me, my new planner for the year. It's blank pages that have not been filled with plans and appointments and birthdays, usually give me a sense of excitement. Every year I go store to store searching for the perfect planner that will serve as my time organizer, a place to scribble down phone numbers, and shopping lists, something that gives me a sense of security knowing that in those pages, my year has had purpose.

 I like to look back through old ones and reminisce about the lunch dates I had forgotten about, laugh at my my side notes to myself such as "Jetta had a poo disaster today. Better luck tomorrow!", and know that in the midst of all of those appointments and schedules and daily struggles, there was LIFE in my days.

 I came across my planner from 2012 a couple weeks ago, and my eyes started to fill with tears before I even opened it. I knew that I would find page after page of hope and excitement and anticipation. I wanted to remember what that felt like, to be alive. I slowly flipped through the pages, smiling at baseball games, VPK graduation, OB appointments with the side note "glucose tests are the WORST!"...like I could ever forget that. And then came April. I nervously turned the page and saw "Isaiah's birthday! Be there at 5:30!!"  I even got my planner out in the hospital to scribble "my sweet boy was born at 7:54!" I not only wrote down all of his appointments, but I had gone ahead to each week and wrote how many weeks he was. I didn't stop at 3. I kept going, all year. And then the end of April came, and there was nothing. I don't remember shoving it in the corner of my closet, but I can see why I did. My year was filled with anticipations of him. 

I started to adapt the mindset that the root of all disappointment is expectation. If I didn't expect anything, if I didn't hope for anything, then I'd never be hurt again. Recently, I realized that this idea is stupid. Somewhere along the way I forgot that God works all things together for our good! I don't have to be afraid to hope or to plan as long as I have faith that God is in control, and even when something falls apart and I have to scribble out that whole rotten day, He's waiting for me with a clean slate on the next day. So today, without fear of the unknown, but with faith in God's perfect will for my life, I will happily hope again. I will write birthdays and anniversaries, appointments and milestones, and I will choose to give these 358 days to the One who first gave them to me! Happy New Year & happy hoping!